History

Early migrations

Khoisanhunter-gatherers are some of the earliest
known modern human inhabitants of the area. They were largely
replaced by Bantutribes during the Bantu
migrations, though small numbers of Khoisans remain in parts of
southern Angola to the present day. The Bantu came from the north, probably
from somewhere near the present-day Republic of Cameroon. When they reached what is now Angola, they
encountered the Khoisans, Bushmen and other groups considerably
less advanced than themselves, whom they easily dominated with
their superior knowledge of metal-working, ceramics and
agriculture. The establishment of the Bantus took many centuries
and gave rise to various groups who took on different ethnic
characteristics.

The BaKongokingdoms
of Angola established trade routes with other trading cities and
civilizations up and down the coast of southwestern and West Africa
but engaged in little or no transoceanic trade. This contrasts with
the Great
ZimbabweMutapa civilization which traded with India,
the Persian Gulf civilizations and China. The BaKongo
engaged in limited trading with Great Zimbabwe, exchanging copper
and iron for salt, food and raffia textiles across the Kongo
River.

Portuguese rule

The geographical areas now designated as Angola first became
subject to incursions by the Portuguese in the late 15th century.
In 1483, when Portugal established relations
with the Kongo State, Ndongo and Lunda existed.
The Kongo
State stretched from modern Gabon in the north
to the Kwanza River in the
south. Angola became a link in European trade with India and
Southeast Asia. The Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias
de Novais founded Luanda in 1575 as "São Paulo de Loanda", with a hundred families
of settlers and four hundred soldiers.Benguela, a Portuguese fort from 1587 which became a town in
1617, was another important early settlement
they founded and ruled. The Portuguese would establish
several settlements, forts and trading posts along the coastal
strip of current-day Angola, which relied on slave trade, commerce in raw materials,
and exchange of goods for survival. The African slave trade provided a large
number of black slaves to Europeans and their African agents. For
example, in what is now Angola, the Imbangala economy was heavily focused on the slave
trade. European traders would export manufactured goods to the
coast of Africa where they would be exchanged for slaves. Within
the Portuguese Empire, most black
African slaves were traded to Portuguese merchants who bought them
to sell as cheap labour for use on Brazilian agricultural
plantations. This trade would last until the first half of the
1800s.

The Portuguese gradually took control of the coastal strip during
the sixteenth century by a series of treaties and wars forming the
Portuguese colony of Angola. Taking advantage of the Portuguese Restoration War, the
Dutch occupied
Luanda from 1641 to 1648, where they allied
with local peoples, consolidating their colonial rule against the
remaining Portuguese resistance.

In 1648 a fleet under the command of Salvador de Sá retook Luanda for
Portugal and initiated a conquest of the lost territories, which
restored Portugal to its former possessions by 1650. Treaties
regulated relations with Congo in 1649 and Njinga's Kingdom of
Matamba and Ndongo in 1656. The conquest of
Pungo Andongo in 1671 was the last great Portuguese expansion, as
attempts to invade Congo in 1670 and Matamba in 1681 failed. Portugal expanded its territory behind the
colony of Benguela in the eighteenth century, and began the attempt
to occupy other regions in the mid-nineteenth century. The process
resulted in few gains until the 1880s.
Development of the hinterland began after the Berlin Conference in 1885 fixed the colony's borders, and British and
Portuguese investment fostered mining, railways, and agriculture.
Full Portuguese administrative control of the hinterland did not
occur until the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1951, the colony was designated as an overseas
province, called Overseas Province of Angola. Portugal had a presence in Angola for
nearly five hundred years, and the population's initial reaction to
calls for independence was mixed. More overtly political
organisations first appeared in the 1950s, and began to make
organised demands for their rights, especially in international
forums such as the Non-Aligned
Movement. The Portuguese regime, meanwhile, refused to accede to the nationalist's demands of separatism, provoking an armed conflict that
started in 1961 when black guerrillas attacked both white and black
civilians in cross-border operations in northeastern Angola.
The war came to be known as the Colonial War. In this struggle, the
principal protagonists were the MPLA (Popular Movement
for the Liberation of Angola), founded in 1956, the FNLA (National Front for
the Liberation of Angola), which appeared in 1961, and UNITA (National
Union for the Total Independence of Angola), founded in
1966. After many years of conflict, Angola gained
its independence on 11 November 1975, after the
1974 coup d'état in the
metropole's capital city of Lisbon which
overthrew the Portuguese regime headed by Marcelo Caetano. Portugal's new revolutionary leaders
began a process of democratic change at home and acceptance of its
former colonies' independence abroad. These events prompted
a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from Portugal's African
territories (mostly from Portuguese Angola and Mozambique), creating over a million destitute Portuguese
refugees — the retornados.

Independence and civil war

After independence in November 1975, Angola
faced a devastating civil war
which lasted several decades and claimed millions of lives and
refugees. Following negotiations held in Portugal, itself under
severe social and political turmoil and uncertainty due to the
April 1974 revolution, Angola's three main guerrilla groups agreed
to establish a transitional government in January 1975. Within two
months, however, the FNLA, MPLA and UNITA were fighting each
other and the country was well on its way to being divided into
zones controlled by rival armed political groups. The superpowers
were quickly drawn into the conflict, which became a flash point
for the Cold War. The United States, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa supported the FNLA and
UNITA.The Soviet Union and Cuba supported
the MPLA.

Ceasefire with UNITA

On February 22, 2002, Jonas Savimbi,
the leader of UNITA, was killed in combat with
government troops, and a cease-fire was reached by the two
factions. UNITA gave up its armed wing and assumed the role of
major opposition party. Although the political situation of the
country began to stabilize, President dos Santos has so far refused
to institute regular democratic processes. Among Angola's major
problems are a serious humanitarian crisis (a result of the
prolonged war), the abundance of minefields, and the actions of guerrilla movements
fighting for the independence of the northern exclave of Cabinda (Frente
para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda). While most of
the internally displaced have now returned home, the general
situation for most Angolans remains desperate, and the development
facing the government challenging as a consequence.

Politics

Angola's motto is Virtus Unita Fortior, a Latin phrase meaning "Virtue is stronger when united."
The executive branch of the government is composed of the
President, the Prime Minister (currently Paulo Kassoma) and the Council of Ministers.
For decades, political power has been concentrated in the
Presidency. The Council of Ministers, composed of all government
ministers and vice ministers, meets regularly to discuss policy
issues. Governors of the 18 provinces are appointed by and serve at
the pleasure of the president. The Constitutional Law of 1992
establishes the broad outlines of government structure and
delineates the rights and duties of citizens. The legal system is
based on Portuguese and customary law but is weak and fragmented,
and courts operate in only twelve of more than 140 municipalities.
A Supreme Court serves as the appellate tribunal; a Constitutional
Court with powers of judicial review has never been constituted
despite statutory authorization.

Parliamentary
elections held on 5 September 2008,
announced MPLA as the winning party with 81% of votes. The closest
opposition party was UNITA with 10%. These elections were the first
since 1992 and were described as only partly
free but certainly not as fair. A White Book on the elections in
2008 lists up all irregularities surrounding the Parliamentary
elections of 2008.

Angola scored poorly on the 2008 Ibrahim Index of African
Governance - it was ranked 44 from 48 sub-Saharan African
countries, scoring particularly badly in the areas of Participation
and Human Rights, Sustainable Economic Opportunity and Human
Development. The Ibrahim Index uses a number of different variables
to compile its list which reflects the state of governance in
Africa.

Treatment of Environmentalists

Sarah Wykes, a London-based researcher
for Global Witness, was arrested in
Angola last year and charged with espionage. She was jailed for
several days before she was released: The charges leveled against
her are still pending.

Exclave of Cabinda

With an
area of approximately , the Northern Angolan province of Cabinda is unique in being separated from the rest
of the country by a strip, some wide, of the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) along the lower Congo river.Cabinda borders the Congo
Republic to the
north and north-northeast and the DRC to the east and south.
The town of Cabinda is the chief population center. According to a
1995 census, Cabinda had an estimated population of 600,000,
approximately 400,000 of whom live in neighboring countries.
Population estimates are, however, highly unreliable. Consisting
largely of tropical forest, Cabinda produces hardwoods, coffee,
cocoa, crude rubber and palm oil. The product for which it is best
known, however, is its oil, which has given it the nickname, "the
Kuwait of Africa". Cabinda's petroleum production from its
considerable offshore reserves now accounts for more than half of
Angola's output. Most of the oil along its coast was discovered
under Portuguese rule by the
Cabinda Gulf Oil Company (CABGOC) from 1968 onwards. Since Portugal handed over sovereignty of its former overseas
province of Angola to the local independentist groups (MPLA, UNITA,
and FNLA), the territory of Cabinda has been a focus of separatist
guerrilla actions opposing the Government of Angola (which has
employed its military forces, the FAA – Forças Armadas
Angolanas) and Cabindan separatists. The Cabindan
separatists, FLEC-FAC, announced a virtual Federal Republic of
Cabinda under the Presidency of N'Zita Henriques Tiago. One of the
characteristics of the Cabindan independence movement is its
constant fragmentation, into smaller and smaller factions, in a
process which although not totally fomented by the Angolan
government, is undoubtedly encouraged and duly exploited by
it.

Military

The Angolan Armed Forces (AAF) is headed by a Chief of Staff who
reports to the Minister of Defense. There are three divisions—the
Army (Exército), Navy (Marinha de Guerra, MGA), and National Air Force (Força Aérea
Nacional, FAN). Total manpower is about 110,000. The army is by far
the largest of the services with about 100,000 men and women. The
Navy numbers about 3,000 and operates several small patrol craft
and barges. Air force personnel total about 7,000; its
equipment includes Russian-manufactured fighters, bombers, and transport
planes.There are also Brazilian-made EMB-312 Tucano
for Training role, Czech-made L-39 for training and bombing role,
Czech Zlin for training role and a variety of western made aircraft
such as C-212\Aviocar, Sud Aviation Alouette III, etc. A small
number of FAA personnel are stationed in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (Kinshasa) and the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville).

Police

The National Police departments are: Public Order, Criminal
Investigation, Traffic and Transport, Investigation and Inspection
of Economic Activities, Taxation and Frontier Supervision, Riot
Police and the Rapid Intervention Police. The National Police are
in the process of standing up an air wing, which will provide
helicopter support for police operations. The National Police are
also developing their criminal investigation and forensic
capabilities. The National Police has an estimated 6,000 patrol
officers, 2,500 Taxation and Frontier Supervision officers, 182
criminal investigators and 100 financial crimes detectives and
around 90 Economic Activity Inspectors.

The National Police have implemented a modernization and
development plan to increase the capabilities and efficiency of the
total force. In addition to administrative reorganization;
modernization projects include procurement of new vehicles,
aircraft and equipment, construction of new police stations and
forensic laboratories, restructured training programs and the
replacement of AKM rifles with 9 mm UZIs for police officers
in urban areas.

Geography

At ,
Angola is the world's twenty-third largest country (after Niger).It is
comparable in size to Mali and is
nearly twice the size of the US state of Texas, or five
times the area of the United Kingdom.

Economy

Angola's economy has undergone a period of transformation in recent
years, moving from the disarray caused by a quarter century of
civil war to being the fastest
growing economy in Africa and one of the fastest in the world. In
2004, China's Eximbank approved a $2 billion line of credit to
Angola. The loan is being used to rebuild Angola's
infrastructure, and has also limited the influence of the International Monetary Fund in the country.

Growth is almost entirely driven by rising oil production which
surpassed in late-2005 and was expected to grow to by 2007. Control
of the oil industry is consolidated in Sonangol Group, a conglomerate which is owned
by the Angolan government. In December 2006, Angola was admitted as
a member of OPEC. The economy grew 18% in 2005,
26% in 2006 and 17.6% in 2007 and it's expected to stay above 10%
for the rest of the decade. The security brought about by the 2002
peace settlement has led to the resettlement of 4 million
displaced persons, thus resulting in large-scale increases in
agriculture production.

The country's economy has grown since achieving political stability
in 2002. However, it faces huge social and economic problems as a
result of the almost continual state of conflict from 1961 onwards,
although the highest level of destruction and socio-economic damage
took place after the 1975 independence, during the long years of
civil war. The oil sector, with its fast-rising earnings has been the
main driving force behind improvements in overall economic
activity – nevertheless, poverty
remains widespread. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International rated
Angola one of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world in 2005.
The
capital city is the most developed and the only large economic
centre worth mentioning in the country, however, slums called musseques, stretch for miles
beyond Luanda's former
city limits.

According to the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative American think
tank, oil production from Angola has increased so significantly
that Angola now is China's biggest supplier of oil.

Demographics

Ethnic groups of Angola

Angola is composed of Ovimbundu 37%,
Mbundu 25%, Bakongo
13%, mestiços (mixed European and native African) 2%,
European 1%, and 22% 'other' ethnic groups. The two Mbundu and
Ovimbundu nations combined form a majority of the population, at
62%.

It is estimated that Angola was host to 12,100 refugees and 2,900
asylum seekers by the end of 2007. 11,400 of those refugees were
originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Kinshasa)
who arrived in the 1970s. As of 2008 there were an estimated 400,000
DRC migrant workers, at least 30,000 Portuguese, and at least 20,000 Chinese living in Angola. Prior to
independence in 1975, Angola had a community of approximately
500,000 Portuguese.

Languages

Portuguese is spoken as a first
language by 60% of the population, and as a second language by
another 20%. The dominance of Portuguese over the native
Kimbundu and other African languages is due
to a strong influence from Portugal, as opposed to in Mozambique, which being more remote from the Lusosphere,
retained a majority of Bantu language speakers.

In a study assessing nations' levels of religious regulation and
persecution with scores ranging from 0-10 where 0 represented low
levels of regulation or persecution, Angola was scored 0.8 on
Government Regulation of Religion, 4.0 on Social Regulation of
Religion, 0 on Government Favoritism of Religion and 0 on Religious
Persecution.

The largest Protestant denominations include the Methodists,
Baptists, Congregationalists
(United Church of Christ), and Assemblies of God. The largest syncretic
religious group is the Kimbanguist
Church, whose followers believe that a mid-20th century Congolese
pastor named Joseph Kimbangu was a prophet. A small portion of the
country's rural population practices animism
or traditional indigenous religions. There is a small Islamic
community based around migrants from West Africa.

In colonial times, the country's coastal populations primarily were
Catholic while the Protestant mission groups were active inland.
With the massive social displacement caused by 26 years of civil
war, this rough division is no longer valid.

Foreign missionaries were very active
prior to independence in 1975, although the Portuguese colonial
authorities expelled many Protestant missionaries and closed
mission stations based on the belief that the missionaries were
inciting pro-independence sentiments. Missionaries have been able
to return to the country since the early 1990s, although security
conditions due to the civil war have prevented them from restoring
many of their former inland mission stations.

The Roman Catholic denomination mostly keeps to itself in contrast
to the major Protestant denominations
which are much more active in trying to win new members. The major
Protestant denominations provide help for the poor in the form of
crop seeds, farm animals, medical care and education in the
English language, math, history and
religion..

Education

Although by law, education in Angola is compulsory and free for 8
years, the government reports that a certain percentage of students
are not attending school due to a lack of school buildings and
teachers. Students are often responsible for paying additional
school-related expenses, including fees for books and supplies. In
1999, the gross primary enrollment rate was 74
percent and in 1998, the most recent year for
which data are available, the net primary enrollment rate was 61
percent. Gross and net enrollment ratios are based on the number of
students formally registered in primary school and therefore do not
necessarily reflect actual school attendance. There continue to be
significant disparities in enrollment between rural and urban
areas. In 1995, 71.2 percent of children ages 7 to 14 years were
attending school. It is reported that higher percentages of boys
attend school than girls. During the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002), nearly half
of all schools were reportedly looted and destroyed, leading to
current problems with overcrowding. The Ministry of Education hired
20,000 new teachers in 2005, and continued to implement teacher
trainings. Teachers tend to be underpaid, inadequately trained, and
overworked (sometimes teaching two or three shifts a day). Teachers
also reportedly demand payment or bribes directly from their
students. Other factors, such as the presence of landmines, lack of
resources and identity papers, and poor health also prevent
children from regularly attending school. Although budgetary
allocations for education were increased in 2004, the education
system in Angola continues to be extremely under-funded. Literacy
is quite low, with 67.4% of the population over the age of 15 able
to read and write in Portuguese. 82.9% of males and 54.2% of women
are literate as of 2001. Since independence from Portugal in 1975,
a number of Angolan students continued to be admitted every year at
Portuguese high schools, polytechnical
institutes, and universities, through bilateral agreements between
the Portuguese Government and the Angolan Government; in general
these students belong to the Angolan elites.

Bösl, Anton (2008). Angola´s Parliamentary Elections in 2008. A
Country on its Way to One-Party-Democracy, KAS
Auslandsinformationen 10/2008.
http://www.kas.de/wf/de/33.15186/

Cilliers, Jackie and Christian Dietrich, Eds. (2000). Angola's
War Economy: The Role of Oil and Diamonds. Pretoria, South Africa,
Institute for Security Studies.

Global Witness (1999). A Crude Awakening, The Role of Oil and
Banking Industries in Angola's Civil War and the Plundering of
State Assets. London, UK, Global Witness.
http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/93/en/a_crude_awakening

Hodges, T. (2004). Angola: The Anatomy of an Oil State. Oxford,
UK and Indianapolis, US, The Fridtjol Nansen Institute & The
International African Institute in association with James Currey
and Indiana University Press.

Human Rights Watch (2004). Some Transparency, No
Accountability: The Use of Oil Revenues in Angola and Its Impact on
Human Rights. New York, Human Rights Watch.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/angola0104/